Listen to the voice of experience, while you can

It's that time of year again, when it gets cold. The water is cold, the air is cold and, even more important for surfers, the wind is cold.

This is the time of year we get ear problems. Infections are common and often blamed on dirty water after rainstorms, often rightfully so. And this is the time of year that the dreaded "surfer's ear" tends to grow the most. Surfer's ear is actually a boney growth that forms in the outer ear canal. It's your body trying to protect your eardrum from the cold.

Eardrums don't like cold. And cold water, cold air and especially cold wind really aggravate it. In the event that the boney growth gets too much and starts to actually close your ear canal, you need to have surgery to get rid of it.

It will not go away once you have it. It only gets more. If you stopped surfing and moved to a warm climate, it might stop the growth, but what you have in there already is gonna stay in there unless you have it removed.

There are preventive measures and ear-care remedies, too. Many surfers have their own formula to help prevent infections, and almost all of them have to do with some mixture of alcohol and olive-oil vinegar.

My mix is 3 parts alcohol to 1 part olive-oil vinegar. This keeps the ear clean and keeps the skin a little moist. You don't want it too dry or it will get flaky.

These types of remedies really help keep away infections. I also recently got a bottle of Doctor Pasternak's Ear Rescue that works just fine, too. Whatever you do, DO NOT use Listerine in your ears. My ear specialist, Dr. Carol Jackson in Newport Beach, told me a classic story about this chick that did that for years because some "surfer dude" on the beach told her it would work. NOT.

Preventing surfer's ear is a real challenge. Many surfers use earplugs of some sort, and they are recommended by most ear doctors. I recently got a waterproof iPod that has those cone-with-ribs earplugs for headphones. Kind of a cool way to surf to music and protect your ears at the same time.

For the most part, ear plugs do not keep water from getting into your ears, but they do keep the cold wind out, and most think that the water that gets in warms up from your body heat and therefore is not all that bad.

What you have to remember is that once you have the growth in your ears, you are susceptible to further growth from just about any cold source. So it is important to keep you ears protected from the wind, and that includes fans and open car windows.

I am not saying you need to wear earmuffs all the time, but that actually would help. Just be aware that any cold source is going to affect your ears, and do what you can to protect them.

Lastly, get your ears checked and cleaned at least once a year. I recently thought I had a bad infection. It turned out to be just a ton of wax and other debris that got clogged in behind my boney growths. Mine are not big enough to have removed at the moment, but big enough to trap wax, etc.

Get 'em looked at. You will not be sorry.

Corky Carroll is a three-time international professional surfing champion and five-time overall U.S. champion. Send comments to corkysurf@aol.com.